


Another Us

by SegaBarrett



Category: How to Get Away with Murder
Genre: Character gets a hug, Gen, Sharing a Living Space
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-18
Updated: 2020-04-18
Packaged: 2021-03-02 05:21:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,842
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23709832
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SegaBarrett/pseuds/SegaBarrett
Summary: Connor and Michaela, on the run.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 14
Collections: Gen Freeform Exchange2020





	Another Us

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Rosemarycat5](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rosemarycat5/gifts).



Michaela Pratt had never been someone who had sat there and passively accepted her lot. That was the first thing that Connor had noticed about her. She was a hurricane, ready to knock over anything that stood in her way. Most of all, she seemed as if she was never afraid, even when she was. Even when that was the only available option.

Michaela was currently passed out on Connor and Oliver’s couch, with a blanket that had somehow ended up tangled not around her waist but on top of her head, a feat that Connor wasn’t entirely sure how she had accomplished.

He didn’t want to wake her, not now. But he did miss her, her counsel, the way that she always seemed to know what the right thing to do was, and she would scream it at anyone who didn’t want to hear it and make them hear it.

There had been something about her, the first time he had seen her. He could remember when he had recognized Aidan, the horror of it, the way he knew that he had a card up his sleeve that would devastate her.

For so much of his life, he would have been gleeful about it through the despair. Let someone else end up disappointed and broken-hearted for once, the same way as he had always been, ever since he had woken up one day and realized that the way he looked at boys was not the way that everyone expected him to look at boys.

But he hadn’t been, because Michaela had seemed so genuine in her frenetic enthusiasm that he had felt his heart break all over, and he had decided that he had never wanted her to feel betrayed ever again.

Now, she was lying there and Connor couldn’t come up with a single word to fix the new mess they had gotten themselves into, so he just sat on the ground and watched her. Maybe in the morning, it would all make sense, and if anyone could figure out an answer, Michaela could.

***

“We need to figure out a way to get out of here.”

Connor listened to Michaela’s words, but he didn’t really know what to say in response. He had his own plan of how to get out from under Annalise’s grip, but it wasn’t one he could bring anyone along on. Even Oliver might decide it had become too much.

He tried to think of what he could tell her in response. He couldn’t admit that he was frightened – no, terrified – of course not. He couldn’t lose face. 

“Are you listening to me, Connor? We need to figure out how to get away from Annalise for good. Otherwise…”

“Otherwise what? What is left that she could do to us that she hasn’t already done?” He crossed his arms over each other and pulled them into his chest, protectively.

“Well, we’re both still breathing, so there’s that,” she said, “For now, at least. Let’s keep it that way. I couldn’t… I couldn’t lose you too.”

Connor looked down.

“Lose me? You couldn’t lose me.”

“You were going to leave. Did you forget about that?” Michaela asked, reaching out to poke at him lightly with her finger. “You were going to run off to California and leave me all alone here, sitting in front of the Liberty Bell and looking like an idiot.”

“Well, if your plan involves the Liberty Bell in any way, that would probably be about what you would look like,” Connor replied with an awkward, sideways smile. “But I don’t think I could have left you.”

“Are you sure? You’ll stay here with me – I mean, with us – forever?”

“I mean… Not until the end of time, maybe. But that’s not important. What’s this plan you have so we can ditch Annalise and get on with our lives? Because right now it sounds like that’s our immediate… number-one survival priority.”

“It’ll need to be all of us, working together.”

“Well, try doing that these days. Try and even get everyone in the same room together without it turning into some kind of a brawl.” Connor dragged his hands over his face. “Is there a Plan B?”

“There will be as soon as I come up with it,” Michaela replied, pulling one hand around her other knuckle. “Do you ever just feel so tense that all of your joints are just…” She bent her fingers. “I mean, that’s how I’ve felt ever since I got to Middleton. I thought that it would be different when I got here… I mean, it was different in college. At least at first.”

Connor took a step forward and craned his head, slightly.

“What happened to change it?” he asked, and she let out a dry laugh. 

“Everyone was so…” she began, “the pressure was on. In college… this sounds awful and so pretentious but… I was the best. I didn’t have to worry about someone coming along and nipping at my heels all the time. I didn’t have to kick to keep my head above water…” She dragged a hand down over her face and let out a sigh. “Connor… I just feel so exhausted all the time, here. But we have to stay here… we need to fight. But we need to get away from her.”

“Maybe this is just what we’re stuck with, Michaela. Maybe there isn’t any other option. I’m trying to see some way out, but…”

“Maybe the way out is… together,” Michaela said, with a shy smile. “I mean not… together. But… Come with me.”

***

They got on the train in Philadelphia, at 30th Street Station. Oliver would meet them when they got there.  
Where “there” was, they hadn’t quite figured out, but at the moment the tickets read “Chicago”. As good a place to any to stat all over again. Or maybe they could catch another train from there and go to the next place with a law school opening.

“Or maybe I don’t want to be a lawyer,” Connor mused, leaning back a little in the seat. 

“You’re good at it,” Michaela told him.

“Maybe I am,” Connor replied after a long moment. “But that doesn’t mean I need to do it.”

“What do you want to do?” Michaela asked, her hand clasping his shoulder as if he would fade away before her if she looked away too long. There had been things chipping away at Connor for a long time now. 

“I don’t know.” He kicked the seat in front of him and let out a sigh. “I don’t really know who I am, anymore. I don’t know if I ever knew. I know that I’m in love with Oliver… Maybe he knows who I am.” He looked out the window and sighed. “Maybe meeting up with him later was a bad idea.”

“It was a good idea,” Michaela urged. “No one will be looking for the two of us out together, doing the Odd Couple thing.” A smile emerged, unbidden, to Connor’s lips. “There it is. You’re seeing the possibilities now. We can get into all sorts of trouble, the kind that won’t land us on death row one day.”

“It would be nice, wouldn’t it?” Connor asked. “But what if… what if we get to somewhere else and whatever is wrong with us is still wrong? And there’s just nothing that we can do about it? Maybe Annalise just… maybe she saw something in us that we can’t see. Maybe there’s something really broken, really wrong.”

“Next stop is Lancaster! Lancaster. All doors will be opening, so if this is your stop, get ready.”

They looked up and watched as a woman with a few children, all dressed in Amish clothing, rose from their seats and prepared to leave the train.

“What if we started over as Amish people?” Michaela suggested, gnawing on her cheek. “We wouldn’t even have to go that far. And no one could tell Annalise that they’d seen us, even. Because… we would be Amish.”

“Would you be happy as a butter-churner, Michaela?” Connor asked, chuckling quietly.

“Well… No,” Michaela said, and looked out the window with a sigh. “But I have all I ever wanted, and I’m not happy now.”

***

They weren’t entirely sure how they even ended up in Cicero, Illinois, but it was as good a place to start over as any. 

Connor tried to stop checking his phone. Once or twice a day, maybe, to see how Oliver was doing with getting closer – he’d need to delete all of their tracks, after all, not just his own. 

The name “Annalise” would pop up in spurious, frenetic texts, one after the other, as if she knew exactly when he was looking down at it and was accusing him. Look at all I’ve done for you and not a single reply, she seemed to be taunting.

Then it became once a day, and then he found himself standing over the garbage disposal (“does anyone really need a garbage disposal?” Michaela had mused to him the day before, and she was probably right) and dropped it down inside. 

And then he stepped away, hands up. 

“What happened? Garbage disposal on the fritz?” Michaela asked, stepping into the room, wrapped in the robe Connor had packed at the last minute, to pay Michaela back for borrowing hers all the time. It was the least he could do. 

“No. I’m the one on the fritz,” Connor replied. “But not for long. Not for now. It’s time…” He sighed. “It’s time to figure out who we’re going to be.”

“How are we supposed to figure that out when neither of us have ever been able to be who we want?”

“We can figure it out.” Connor shrugged. “Who do you want to be?”

“I know who I wanted to be,” Michaela replied, taking a spot on the couch. It had come with the apartment and Connor had decided he didn’t really want to know what people had done on it before they had gotten it. “I used to come up with fake names… fake stories, back when I was a kid. I’d be… Diana. Or Muffy, even. A rich kid.”

Connor smirked.

“Muffy, really?”

“Don’t make fun of me. I was like five years old.”

“Okay, well, if you’re going to be Muffy… I’ll be Biff.”

Michaela snorted.

“You’ve got to be kidding me.”

“We can go down to the country club and eat some fancy small bites.” 

“Those little spinach things,” Michaela suggested. 

Connor took a seat beside her and laid back, letting out a breath he didn’t know he had been holding. It seemed like it was right in front of him.

Michaela leaned her head on his shoulder, then wrapped her arms around him and held him tight.

“I could get used to being Muffy.”

They could be anyone else in the world, Connor thought to himself, but in any alternate universe they might dive into… he knew they would always be friends.


End file.
